Archive for August, 2014

It is so refreshing and inspiring to come across an artist with such a playful and creative catalogue as S. M. Samsu. Not bound to the western conventions of perspective or the intellectual blind alley of westen post war art, Samsu’s work sparkles with artistic freedom and the joy of painting. Of course Samsu is established within the genre of Bangladeshi rickshaw art, but he lifts the genre to new heights with his colourful symphony of animals, birds and people. Especially his paintings where animals take the place of people, as in his “Rickshaw workshop” and “school”, are just so playful and surreal they instantly make the viewer smile.

The images are taken from rickshaw-paint.net, where artwork by S. M. Samsu and other Bangladeshi rickshaw painters can be bought.

I have always been a collector of little things. My first collection was a shoe box full of pine cones. Later I found it more exiting to collect objects that didn’t all look the same, like stamps for instance. My grandfather was a diligent and proud philatelist and used to give me stamps for Christmas. As I child I spent hours organizing and admiring these little artpieces, which is a labour I appreciate now, many years later. As well as being amazing graphic design pieces, these stamps are also icons of a bygone era. A digital print of an Adobe Illustrator file will never be quite the same as a miniature engraving, as many of the old stamps are. Here are some of the favourite pieces from my collection; the rest of the set can be found here: Thirty Stamps